[ryrobes]

I recall seeing a tweet this morning stating the same for ethics committees in academic research papers. Students are being taught to put questionable things in - that are easy to excise. They get challenged, remove the red herring, and are approved since the "offended party" feels appeased.

Anyways, Interesting analog. Intellectual dishonestly aside...

I have no first hand knowledge, but it seems highly probable.

[stcredzero]

Students are being taught to put questionable things in - that are easy to excise. They get challenged, remove the red herring, and are approved since the "offended party" feels appeased.

I've heard similar stories with regards to censors. I've also seen it at work with release reviews. Pointy-haired management was given something obvious to correct, to keep them from thinking of something out of left field.

[drtillberg]

It's a weak strategy. If you make an obvious error in many contexts you are very likely to (at best) invite a cascade of critique that otherwise would have been skipped. At worst, you'll be written off permanently as a fool, fired and/or sued.

[acqq]

See also "the duck":

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1220...

[ryrobes]

Hah, that is a great story.

Reminds me of ancedotes of devs intentionally wasting ram in old school console game development; locking it up in some obscure way; just so that at the 11th hour, you can remove it and claim "amazing optimizations". ;)

[woolvalley]

I've done it in code reviews, especially with picky people.

[ouid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

[pietroglyph]

This is the origin of the term "bike-shedding"!